didn’t argue, just unclipped one of his hammers and slid it to me through a gap in the grate that separated us. I picked it up and put my hand out flat on the wall next to me.
There are legends about the old Dwarves, the ones who came before CERN. Some of them could walk through rock, or cause cave-ins by breaking the tunnel walls from the other side. I had never met anyone who could do that but I knew that I was able to feel the rock around me when I was in a cave. I could tell sometimes when there was an open space nearby, and once I swore that I could smell the crystals in the walls of a cave in Arkansas. I hoped that a collapsed-brick tunnel was close enough for my senses to help me.
I worked hard to filter out Virgil’s screaming and the laughter from the end of the tunnel where Ethan was trying to negotiate. I tried to push my senses out through the bricks, into the space beyond to see what was there.
I felt bricks beneath my hands, and beyond them something else. Calling up all of my hope and the power of my heritage, I gave the hammer as much of a swing as I could in the cramped space. Raine’s protests died when the wall me crumbled and revealed an even smaller tunnel. It was too small for me, but I could tell right away that Virgil would have no trouble.
I turned to the boy, whose wailed had turned to tearful moans, and I said, “Virgil. Kid. Hey!” My shout got his attention for a moment, and I pointed at the hole I’d made in the wall. “Get in there and see if you can find out how they dropped these grates. You’re the only one who can do this. Look for a chain or a rope or something.”
It took me a few more seconds to make him understand what I was looking for, but eventually he crawled into the tunnel and started looking around. I passed him my knife.
“I see… there’s a rope. Um. There are a lot of ropes.”
“Start cutting them. Cut ‘em all,” I said. There wasn’t time for engineering considerations. The werewolves were getting louder outside; I could see that Ethan was surrounded by a shrinking circle and that Baran’s bow was bent even further back, the string trembling under the strain. They wouldn’t survive him shooting someone; the assembled forces would tear them apart. We had to get out there to back them up.
There was a twang in the wall and I felt the grate next to me shift downward an inch before stopping. “Good job!” I told Virgil. “Keep going!”
I turned just in time to see Birgitte unclipping a grenade from her vest. “What’re you going to do with that?” I said.
She nodded toward the hole where Virgil had vanished. “Get us out of here sooner,” she said.
I shifted my weight around and pulled my shotgun up to bear on her. “You pull that pin and it’ll be the last thing you do.”
“You fucking newbie idiot,” she snarled. “You think we’re going to live long enough to have that kid cut those fucking ropes?” Another twang punctuated her words, and the grate next to Baran shifted downward. The grate between me and Baran fell back down into the ground, giving me a little more room to maneuver. It also gave Baran the chance to grab my shotgun and wrench it upward so that it wasn’t pointed at Birgitte anymore. I swore and struggled with him, but he had leverage on me.
“If she does that she’ll bring the whole tunnel down on us!” I protested, trying to pull my gun out of Baran’s hands.
“You pull that pin I’ll shoot you myself,” said Gunner, his deep voice rumbling through the tunnel from behind Birgitte. We stopped long enough to see him at the end of the tunnel, his greenish face hanging like a moon in the gloom but the muzzle of his pistol clearly visible. It was aimed at Birgitte’s head. She snarled something and put her grenade back, and then Baran let go of my shotgun after I relaxed.
“This isn’t over,” said Birgitte, glaring at me. Before I could respond there was a series of twangs in the wall and both Baran’s grate and the grate that covered the front of the tunnel fell down. He and I changed plans without talking about it. I handed his hammer to him and surged out the hole after him. I called back, “Virgil! Cut the other ropes the same way!” as I crawled out.
The werewolves had been distracted by the giant grate falling. Ethan had taken advantage of that distraction, correctly interpreting the sound and reaching down to pick up his fallen gun. The werewolves recovered quickly, drawing various firearms and hand-to-hand weapons, so I opened up with the shotgun as soon as I had a clear line of fire.
Mossberg makes wonderful weapons, and I hadn’t had to modify anything but the loads. After CERN, a lot of the old stories were suddenly true, and I loaded my rounds accordingly. Each one was still about half lead, but I had added a few pieces of shot made from silver and a few more made from iron to each one, capping them off with a sprinkle of good old rock salt for its cleansing and preserving abilities. Werewolves could recover from damn near anything but fire and silver, and their supernatural healing was a lot slower in the sunlight. I didn’t have to kill them so much as incapacitate them long enough for my axe to get to work severing parts.
I shot for the legs, blowing out knees as Raine waded in, bellowing. People have the idea that a shotgun covers a huge area, and when you’re standing far away enough that’s true. From fifteen feet, you’re talking about an area the size of a baseball, so even close-up you’ve still got to aim a little unless the gun’s cut down to ridiculous lengths. Between the bits of silver and the sheer impact of the other ingredients, the wolves that went down weren’t very interested in getting up again. I’d read somewhere that the salt interfered with the healing as well. All I knew was that physics was enough to stun the shit out of your average werewolf.
Raine had obviously read the same books. Again, a hammer to the head wasn’t going to kill one, but it would keep the wolf’s mind off of current events while it tried to heal the damage. Anything that couldn’t heal instantly from a wound was going to feel it when one of those hammers hit. If it had been nighttime, it would have been a different story, but during the day we were able to hold our own.
Ethan shot mechanically, his gun moving from point to point without seeming to cross the space in between. He looked like a trick of robotics, every round hitting something either fatal or painful enough to draw a wolf’s attention away from us. He even shot weapons out of hands, something I’d never seen before.
Baran was simply magical, aiming and firing his bow at targets that I didn’t even realize were around. He stood back from the carnage, apparently unaffected by it, aiming at distant targets before they became serious problems.
My only warning that Birgitte had joined the battle was a low whoosh as she moved by me. She was obviously used to working with the others, darting in and out of Raine’s fight to land blows with her sabre and a dagger that, to judge by the reactions that the werewolves had to it, was at least edged in silver. Still, the four of them seemed unbalanced somehow, struggling to close the flank until Gunner got there. With his enormous sword flailing, he protected the other half of the battlefield the same way that Raine did his.
With Gunner and Raine holding them off, Ethan landing shot after shot, Birgitte stabbing through the holes in the defense, and Baran sniping anything that he saw, the werewolves simply couldn’t sustain their assault. Their return fire was pitiful, disorganized; they were used to killing with teeth and claws, not pistols.
I couldn’t see the best place for me to lend an axe or a shotgun without hitting one of my own people, so I concentrated on making sure that Lynette and Virgil were all right. Lynette was screaming into the tunnel for her boy and she wouldn’t get out of my way. I finally had to lift her by both shoulders and move her aside so I could get in there. She struggled and tried to fight me, but I ignored her; against my armor, her blows were as effective as strokes from a butterfly’s wing. The gunfire and screaming faded as I crawled back in, taking comfort in the walls of cinder block and wood. I found the entrance to Virgil’s tunnel and called down it.
“Hey kiddo! It’s Ward! Your mom’s looking for you!”
Virgil’s dust-streaked face appeared, start
ling me a little, and I helped him out of the tunnel.
By the time we got out into the open air, the battle was pretty much over. Werewolves lay badly hurt all around use, and the only indications that the Breakers had been in a fight were the streaks of blood and occasional scratch on their armor. Ethan saw us crawl out and nodded to us. “Okay, let’s get the hell out of here before more of them show up.”
“Anyone bit?” said Baran. I felt a chill. The bite of a werewolf can pass on its curse, even if the wolf in question is in Human form at the time. Fortunately, no one seemed to have been bitten.
“We were lucky, folks,” said Ethan. I wasn’t sure about that; Birgitte’s glare promised me a slow death. I didn’t have time to worry about her brand of crazy at the moment, though. I made sure that Virgil was okay and walking, and I got my knife back from him.
We fled the Eight Claws territory. I wasn’t sure if Lynette was sticking to her original route but I doubted it; the new one involved a lot of straight lines and quick travel. It was a while before we stopped to take stock.
As soon as we stopped in the storefront of a blasted-out gas station, Birgitte took two quick steps and slammed me into a wall. She leaned her full weight on me, a situation that would have been